An "Apostolic Encounter of the Wrong Kind"

Yesterday I was packing my car getting ready to leave for a gig. A man drenched from the pouring rain was walking up our driveway carrying a bag filled with leaflets and handed me one and said: "We are starting a new church and would you like to come?"
I really wanted to chat with him but I was already late for the show and quickly said, "We are Catholic and belong to the Church Jesus started." I know it may sound snide and triumphalistic to some, but that was not my intention at all. In just a few seconds of time to answer, I wanted to give him something to think about as he continued on his way through my neighborhood. (which is mostly Catholic due to our proximity to St. Joseph's)

On his way out the driveway he mumbled: "We're apostolic ya know." Perhaps he actually understood my point and tried to counter it by stating that they too were from the Church Jesus started. The only problem is that they are not! A person who calls himself a pastor 400 years separated in time from the apostles teaching as passed down through apostolic succession decided to rent a classroom from a local private private school and start a new church, calling it apostolic.

Here are a few thoughts about apostolicity from the Church whose roots are found in the apostles:(cf The Catechism)

77 "In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left behind bishops as their successors. They gave them "their position of teaching authority." Indeed, "the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time.

84 The apostles entrusted the "Sacred deposit" of the faith (the depositum fidei, 1 Tim 6:20, 2 Tim 1:12-14), contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church. "By adhering to [this heritage] the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remains always faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers. So, in maintaining, practicing, and professing the faith that has been handed on, there should be a remarkable harmony between the bishops and the faithful."

So, I hope and pray this gentleman will eventually see that his "new church" is not apostolic simply by calling itself so. You need to be able to trace your teachings to the ones handed down from the apostles. That's how the early Church detected false teachers and heresy. They would inquire who their bishop was and who ordained him etc. If they could not "track back" to the "gang of 12" then they were to be avoided. If the line of succession is broken, the folks after that break cannot and should not call themselves apostolic. This is not triumphalism, separatism or nanny nanny foo-fooism, but just illustrating a process that has continued unbroken for almost 2000 years.

St Augustine said:

[T]here are many other things which most properly can keep me in [the Catholic Church’s] bosom. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15–17], up to the present episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics, so much so that, although all heretics want to be called ‘Catholic,’ when a stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house(or rented classroom)" (Against the Letter of Mani Called "The Foundation" 4:5 [A.D. 397]).